μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif
Scholars’ trail — 1reference

The index’s own references — the collections where scholars sighted this story-shape, tradition by tradition. Titles on our shelf are live links; the rest is the frontier, not yet shelved.

  • general Anderson FFC XLII 200.
Within the index

Filed under Riddles based on unusual circumstances.

2 finer motifs beneath it
What does God do? He brings low the proud and exalts the lowly (said by shepherd masking as bishop to king, who has exchanged places with him). (Cf. H562.)What does God do? God is astonished that I sit on a horse and the king on an ass (see H797.1)
Filed beside it
Riddle: a fish was my father; a man was my mother. (Man eats magic fish and becomes pregnant; a girl is taken from his knee.)Riddle of the unborn. I am unborn; my horse is unborn; I carry my mother on my hands. (A boy who has been taken from his dead mother's body digs up the body of his mother and makes gloves of her skin. He rides on a colt which has been taken from a dead mare's body.)Riddle: seven tongues in a head. (A horse's head in which a bird's nest is found with seven birds in it.)Relationship riddles arising from unusual marriages of relativesRiddle: one killed none and yet killed twelve. (Horse is poisoned; raven eats of him and dies; twelve robbers eat raven and die.)Riddle: deaths from sleepiness, anger, and greed. Elephant sleeps before snake's hole. Snake bites elephant and kills it. Jackal eats hole in elephant and is caught inside. Snake can't get out of its holeRiddle: from the eater came forth meat and from the strong sweetness. (Swarm of bees and honey in lion's carcass.)Riddle of the murdered lover. With what thinks, I drink; what sees, I carry; with what eats I walk. (Queen has cup made from skull of her murdered lover; ring with one of his eyes; she carries two of his teeth in her boots.)Riddle: drink this wine which a bird took to nest. (Stork took bunch of grapes to nest; boy makes wine from them.)Formerly I was daughter, now I am mother; I have a son who was the husband of my mother. (Girl has nursed her imprisoned father through a crack in the prison wall.)

wander